


Breathe

by ReaperWriter



Category: Scandal (TV)
Genre: Gen, Gladiators, Manumition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-22
Updated: 2012-06-22
Packaged: 2017-11-08 07:06:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/440491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReaperWriter/pseuds/ReaperWriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i> She had been a winter bride. </i>
</p><p>The genesis of three Gladiators in Suits, and the moment when one slips away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathe

**Author's Note:**

> The song lyrics are from _Breathe_ by Anna Nalick. Neither they, nor Scandal are my sandboxes. I am just borrowing them.

_2 AM and she calls me 'cause I'm still awake,  
"Can you help me unravel my latest mistake?,  
I don't love him. Winter just wasn't my season"  
Yeah we walk through the doors, so accusing their eyes  
Like they have any right at all to criticize,  
Hypocrites. You're all here for the very same reason._

  
Abby Whelan had been the prettiest, smartest, funniest girl in their law school class.  Olivia had been the biggest bitch.  They had spent most of their 1L year hating each other, passionately, until a night involving tequila and jello shots at Harry Cooper’s “Last Final of 1L Year” bash.  Some friend of some classmate had gotten in Abby’s face and wouldn’t back down when she said no, and her own drunken boyfriend had been nowhere in sight.  Liv had slugged the guy.  And later, Abby held Liv’s hair back as she puked.

They had been inseparable after that, all the way through graduation.  Through Olivia’s climb in politics as an intern their third year, right up through Abby’s wedding.  She had been a winter bride.  Olivia had actually introduced them, having met Charles Putney at a function at the Virginia State Capital.  She had never felt entirely good about Chuck, but Abby was happy, and Abby was in love, and she wanted to be happy for her.  She still had the ridiculous mauve dress that she wore in their wedding.  At first, she had been too busy to trash it or donate it (and who would want it anyway?).  Later, it become a reminder, that trusting your gut was paramount, was sacrosanct.  That, and it had given her something to wipe the blood off her tire iron with.

_Cause you can't jump the track, we're like cars on a cable  
And life's like an hourglass, glued to the table  
No one can find the rewind button, girl.  
So cradle your head in your hands  
And breathe... just breathe,  
Oh breathe, just breathe_

Stephen had been collateral damage.  A scandal, a hooker, and this smarmy, smarmy man in Liv’s face, asking…neigh, begging her not to drag him into the mud to save the reputation of the Congresswoman’s husband.  And for some reason, known only to God and Olivia Pope, who could occasionally be the same person, she hadn’t.  She had found an alternative.  Had gotten another good for nothing, cheating politico husband out of the frying pan without landing him in the fire, all while keeping the fact that the biggest swinging lothario in Washington occasionally paid for it out of the news cycle.  She had never been entirely sure what Stephen wanted hidden- the sex or the money.

What she got in return was loyalty and a carte blanche.  Anything she needed.  Any time she needed it.  Come hell or damnation.  Stephen never told her the cost, never sent her a bill.  Money was no object, and neither was the fancy firm partnership it cost him when he put one of her cases ahead of a priority client.  They had been drinking buddies, card game opponents, and comrades in arms.  She was the one woman in his life, beyond his mother, whom he had never tried to bed.  He had always known one day she would run her own show, and when she called him to come, he did so more than willingly.  He did it with the fervency of a true believer.

_There's a light at each end of this tunnel,  
You shout 'cause you're just as far in as you'll ever be out  
And these mistakes you've made, you'll just make them again  
If you'd only try turning around._

Harrison had been a self-sabotager his whole life.  Usually he could keep it to little things.  Relationships.  The occasional paper or class.  Somehow, whenever things got going too well, some little switch in his brain would trip, and the next thing he knew, he would be throwing something away.  Which is how he came to meet Olivia Pope.  She had been brought in clean up the mess of his firm, and right away, he’s in awe.  She walks tall, talks fast, and can cow men twice her age and three times as powerful. 

So he has no clue what to think when she shows up at his sentencing, and talks to the prosecutor and the judge, and suddenly, its less time by half.  His attorney gives him her card, with the words “Call Me” on the back of it.  It’s definitely not a come on, of that he’s sure.  So when he gets out, he does.  And he’s never once regretted it.

_Cause you can't jump the track, we're like cars on a cable  
And life's like an hourglass, glued to the table  
No one can find the rewind button, girl.  
So cradle your head in your hands  
And breathe... just breathe,  
Oh breathe, just breathe_

She knows she’s sacrificed something very real, the moment she gives the order to clean up Gideon Wallace’s murder scene.  She sees it in the eyes, the ones that once said they would follow her anywhere, into hell if necessary.  Now wondering if she is sacrificing this, sacrificing all of them, needlessly, for two lost little girls. 

In the end, she’ll count the cost and pray it’s not ruinously high.  But that will come later.  As she drops her pass at the guard shack and walks out, all she can do, all she can manage, is just to breathe.

**Author's Note:**

> This was started before I leaned a series regular had opted out of season two. It breaks my heart to see them go.


End file.
